[Foundation-l] Development tasks and project needs

[Erik Moeller]

Daniel-
> Yep. Such as pages devoted to news in particular nations. We could register
> wikinews.us, for example, and redirect it to the U.S. news page on the
> English Wikinews. If and when other Wikinews' U.S. news pages get busy
> enough, then we could have xx.wikinews.us redirects as well. But wikinews.us
> by itself should still auto redirect to the English version (and wikinews.ru
> should always prefer the Russian Wikinews even if other xx.wikinews.ru
> redirects exist, ect for each nation/primary language spoken in that
> nation).

I'm not too fond of getting those domain names, because we have to look  
after them. People link to them, put them in their bookmarks, etc., and if  
one of them stops working, we have a big problem - and may not even notice  
it. I'd prefer short canonical URLs (some of the arguments why this is bad  
on Wikipedia don't apply to Wikinews), but Brion opposes that.

>> Such a task coordinator would prioritize tasks, maintain contacts to
>> potentially interested sponsors, and make recommendations on spending a
>> certain part of our internal budget on development tasks. He would write
>> the basic specifications, try to locate interested developers (both by
>> inviting them directly, and by having public calls for tenders), watch
>> over the implementation, and decide whether it meets the specs (together
>> with the Board and the MediaWiki Release Manager, Brion Vibber).

> Sounds more like a Chief Technical Officer to me. If we can't pay you to do
> this, then you might as well have a nice title to put on your resume. :)

Two problems with that:
- I am not qualified, by myself, to give good hardware recommendations;  
software is my main focus of interest.
- The position should exist alongside that of the MediaWiki Release  
Manager, not above it. In the long term, I believe that the RM position  
should be an official Wikimedia title.

But, in line with Sj's comments about mobilizing volunteers, an  
alternative would be a "Research Committee" with an elected or appointed  
chair (Chief Scientist or Chief Research Officer). This also makes it  
clear that everything the committee comes up with are recommendations that  
can be ignored by the board, by the Release Manager, and by the other  
developers (though it would be helpful, in the long term at least, if a  
reason was required for ignoring the recommendations).

This committee could eventually also cover hardware recommendations,  
though perhaps it would be sensible to have a separate elected chairperson  
for that department.

I would be willing to set up this Committee and the elections for its  
chairperson(s) on Meta, but I'd like to get at least a basic go-ahead from  
Jimbo et al. before doing this - there's not much point if the committee  
is going to be ignored.

Regards,

Erik